The government of the people, by the people and for the people no longer works. Or at least is grinding to a halt. The people seem to know it as their opinion of Congress is the lowest it has ever been. We are grasping for leaders to lead us out of the quagmire.
The following was found in the The American Conservative, which illustrates how we can no longer solve problems from on top. I claim it is because we are way top heavy in our efforts.
The Politics of Same
By Fred Reed
“It seems to me that America's difficulty in facing the country's problems is not that we have the problems, but that we can't face them or won't--that the machinery of government and means of political change have frozen, congealed, clotted. Solutions are often possible, but movement toward them isn't. The optimistic might see this as a challenge, others as rigor mortis.”
Though not as pessimistic; I think the trend is painfully obvious. To change the way things work or more precisely don’t work is after all the purpose behind my blogging effort. The article goes briefly through our major problems from education to housing to the military and a lot of the others. Mr. Reed’s take on the situation was “…..what is politically possible won't work, and what will work isn't politically possible. Gridlock.”
I would like to provide a way to solve the dilemma. From all places out of China, out of the mouth of former Premier Zhou En-Lai. Last night I listened to a channel I had never listened to on D TV. It was a Chinese channel and lightly translated. (Everyone talked Chinese, subtitles were in Chinese with only a translator talking seemingly uncut in an almost unintelligible, to me accent). It was a show about Zhou En-lai and how he brought China out of the “Bad Old Days” of the Cultural Revolution and into a more moderate new era.
I was struck by the translators use of the words “Truth from Fact”. In our culture the two have become equal. I agree with my Comrade Zhou. (wow did this Conservative Republican just say that? lol). Zhou En-lai was talking in regard to his country’s philosophy. He meant that his country’s governing mechanism should be led by truth not have the facts shifted around to meet the philosophy.
When a judge looks at the facts he ultimately has to decide on which of the facts lead to the truth. This presumes there is a truth. As in our case the law is based upon the truth agreed upon in our Constitution. In China the truth is codified as well. Both are based upon the well being of the people.
The translator further went on to talk about how that thought led to the idea that practice should determine doctrine or ideology not the other way around.
This idea struck me in its simplicity. This is the same type of idea as “enjoy the Journey not the destination”
This fits perfectly into my “Make Do, Make It Now, Make It Work”. An axiom of my 3M idea is that we continually remake (it) in the image of what we learn in the process of making it originally. In this way we learn by the doing. We also make ourselves better for the effort. We keep making it better to fit the ever changing landscape. This is the essence of the “bottom up” approach. Let the individual through “individual Freedom” do the remaking. Let the government see the “truth” in those efforts and remake it’s own laws to facilitate that freedom.
I sometimes think we in America face an unbeatably entrenched Bureaucracy, well I should think of Communist China and be thankful. Zhou En-lai fought long and hard to make his vision a reality against a lot tougher odds than we. For one we only have a hundred years of bureaucratic tradition to fight vs. China’s thousand.
Perhaps if I think of the struggle as the journey I will be able to enjoy it, feel more at peace with it and take comfort in what I can accomplish along the way. For myself as well as others. Let the end result be what it will be. Then others can take over the journey in their quest for their individual growth and freedom.
Could it be as simple as learning to do things for ourselves more and relying on the government for less? Not THAT simple. There is a “Happiness” to be found in the journey towards that freedom. We have to practice that freedom to relearn the “Happiness” that comes from that. Then we must demand our right to pursue that freedom. That is where the journey is, the work that we must learn to enjoy. We can then go about our journey of changing the laws that interfere with our “Happiness”
Regards, Live Dangerously Be A Conservative
